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Ikaris remembered two things from his first two decades on Earth. The first, Sersi in life green, illuminated by the glow of the planet they were about to protect.
The second was carnage.
Perhaps because it was his first mission, but it stood out as his only other constant during that time. His mind, hyper focused on his mission, had not the time to process the people he was saving, to take in their new tools, their language, their world filled with jagged cliffs and roaring seas. He had no room yet for anything else.
The dirt ran in rivers of dark blood, thick and green and different from the human red left in smudges and pools from where he’d failed. The planet had been overrun, and Ikaris’ job was to cut back the overpopulation. Exterminate.
He and the team he fought alongside, piled bodies around their feet.
Over the years, he’d gotten to know some of them. The hard lines between coworker and companion softening, distorting, disappearing. For some, it hadn’t ever existed.
Ikaris wasn’t sure how they did it, how some seemed warm instead of the steeped in blood and seclusion that enveloped him like a cage around a wild animal. At least with the Thinkers, who built the human’s minds up and their cities and fields, it made sense why they might adopt some of the human’s traditions and characteristics. He’d never held Sersi in his contempt for learning their languages and laboring with them like she was mortal too- but perhaps it made him feel inadequate with himself for lacking the ability to do the same.
Two decades on Earth with his fellow eternals, and he wasn’t sure about any of them. He did not know them, an observer through a thick paned window, though he was unsure whether it was he or they who were on the blind side. He wondered who they saw- was he to them a statue warrior with barely a name and no identity, as they were to him a group to carry out Arishem’s mission and his to command?
But Ikaris knew of them.
Ajak was the only one the others saw as higher in power. Her keen eyes and soothing hands, and she looked at Ikaris like she saw right through him. Like he had been unraveled and she was inspecting for a single thing a single flaw, with the gaze of Arishem’s judgment.
Sersi was the first he’d met, more beautiful than anything his new eyes had ever seen. More than the towering red god before him, more beautiful than the galaxies, the stars in space, the frightening heat of the Sun.
Gilgamesh was the one with the punch that buried a Deviant into its own grave. Kingo was the one with energy at his fingertips, who had some peculiar friendship with the rest of them the likes of which was only mirrored quite the same in Sersi and who talked to Ikaris like they’d been friends for an eternity already. The speedster, Makkari he thought her name was, who spoke with her hands and was too fast to properly see.
The first time he’d ever spoken to Thena, he ordered her to stop leaving to fight Deviants without the rest of them. She hadn’t said anything back, simply looked at him with terrible gray eyes that seemed to cleave him through the gut. He’d left with the experience of having a golden blade centimeters away from slitting his throat, and the gleam of her straight white smile a threat in the back of his mind.
He knew the other three Thinkers even less. There was the little one with orange hair and distant firework stories in the sky and the innovating one always locked away in the Domo fiddling with one thing or another in his hands and the silent one in the corner of the room with recalcitrant eyes and shrouded in an unnerving stillness like a death ridden winter.
Out of them, it was the smallest who approached Ikaris with a stubborn set of her face, crossed arms. Everyone else had cleared out after the meeting Ajak had held, wandering away in pairs or trios or alone, to hunt for Deviants or join the human celebrations and feasts, or coop back up. Gilgamesh and Thena and Kingo, Sersi on her own, Ajak and the inventor, the speedster and the silent one.
The little one remained leaning against the wall, ankles crossed, arms tight over her chest. She wasn’t looking at Ikaris, but he got the prickling sense that she was observing him. After a long minute of silence, in which Ikaris felt like her heavy attention was keeping him from leaving, but unsettled at being under the scrutiny of the elusive illusionist, she spoke up,
“I’m Sprite, in case you were wondering,” she said baldly, pushing away from her perch like she was being peeled off it, slow and deliberately careless, “you know, even Thena only took half a decade to introduce herself, so you mind telling me what’s your problem?”
Stunned, Ikaris opened his mouth without having an adequate response other than, “I’m sorry?”
“As far as I know, Makkari’s the only one deaf here, buddy,” Sprite said impatiently, “you heard me.”
When Ikaris didn’t respond, she rolled her eyes, “Even Kingo’s getting a little offended. So go on, it’s just us. No need to be shy, we’re going to be spending the next thousands of years together.”
Ikaris looked around, a bit lost, until the only place he hadn’t looked was in the unimpressed eyes of the eternal in front of him and- how did she get so close so quickly?
“I’m Ikaris,” Ikaris offered stiltedly.
“I know,” Sprite waved him off, apparently indifferent to how continuously wrongfooted Ikaris had suddenly found himself, "Sersi won’t shut up about you”
Ikaris startled at the name, lips turning up slightly at the corners at the thought of her, “Sersi?”
“Oh yeah,” Sprite was grinning now, an uneven, wicked slant of her mouth, “she’s really bad at hiding how mopey she gets when you don’t hang out with her when she’s with the humans.”
Ikaris defended immediately, “I don’t interfere with humans, I-”
“Fight Deviants, yeah I know, your addiction rivals Thena’s,” she arched her brows high on her forehead, “but it’s been two decades already, maybe you should think about getting a life?”
“Are you always this caustic?”
She shot him a taunting little smile, “only when people are being stupid.”
“Sprite,” Ikaris warned, falling back into the tone he used when on a battlefield out of sheer bewilderment with how to handle the situation.
“Ease up, Ikaris,” Sprite scoffed, reached out and patted him on the arm. Despite her bluntness, she almost seemed kind in that moment, sympathetic, “eternity’s a long time to go without anyone to spend it with.”
As she passed him on her way out, he reached for her shoulder without thinking, “is that an offer?”
“For what?”
“I don’t-” Ikaris huffed, pulled back, “nevermind.”
She smiled again, playful but sharp with blade-like edges, “humans have something called a friendship , Ikaris,” she goaded, “maybe ask Sersi what it means, and I’ll take you to a Sumerian party as a gift of it.”
“A- what?”
Sprite laughed, was already twirling from his grasp and swinging back around. Her footsteps echoed in the empty chamber, along with her voice, “friends, Ikaris, get a bigger vocabulary.”
And then he was alone.